First Thing in the Morning
Eat the frog first
This story isn’t going to be a productivity guide.
I’m paraphrasing a line that goes something like this: “The quality of your morning decides the overall performance of your day.” This means if your morning goes well, there is a high possibility that your overall day will go well too.
But it’s so easy to ruin your morning and thus the overall day. Wake up. Grab your phone. Open Instagram, TikTok, or YouTube — watch and doomscroll unless you don’t feel hungry. Eat breakfast. Watch Tv. Read newspaper. Take a nap. That’s how you ruin your morning and the overall day.
You do nothing important.
So if you don’t do anything important in the morning it’s so obvious to feel unproductive or unmotivated to start the momentum of doing something creative like doing your main work.
So what should you do in the morning to make your overall day effective?
Well, it depends on person to person. But I can safely say that the answer would be the same for all professionals — whether you’re a student, writer, programmer, coder, or YouTuber.
Here’s what you need to know:
Do your main task first in the morning.
This is the only way to make your mornings most productive as well as your overall day. I’m talking from my personal experience. If I don’t write (as a writer) in the morning, I feel terrible. I feel shame for not doing the work that is supposed to be done. I feel guilty for not doing it.
But if the first thing — I write in the morning, I feel proud of myself. It gives me a feeling of accomplishment. Doesn’t really matter whether I’ve written a few lines, paragraphs, or stories. The feeling would be the same — Great!
Once I have written something in the morning, it makes a lot easier for me to focus on the other important tasks in the afternoon, evening, and at night — whether it’s designing on Canva, Watching long-form educational YouTube videos, or reading Paul Graham deep dive essays.
So the framework is simple to make my day effective: First, write in the morning (always), and then in the evening and night, do other creative tasks or explore new things.
And heck, we should do this. As a writer, writing is your first priority. The rest is secondary (don’t make it complicated please!) If you’re a coder, the first thing you should do in the morning is to code. If you’re a designer, the first thing you should do in the morning is to design. If you’re a salesperson, the first thing you should do in the morning is to make calls.
You get the point!
First, eat the frog (not mean to say “Difficult task”) This means, do the most important task(your main task) in the morning and you’ll realize that this instantly gets you on track for the overall day.
Once you have the momentum, it’s easy to keep it.
But doing the main work first thing in the morning doesn’t mean: wake up and get straight to work. Nope. That would be terrible for your eyes and for your overall health. First, wake up. Drink a glass of water. Get some sunlight. Go for a walk. Eat breakfast. Get to work.
That’s exactly what I do. It’s 11:00 am I’m writing this story!
